Moral Equivalent Of War Essay

Since the beginning of time, war has been practiced for numerous reasons ultimately to benefit a group of people or nations. But, when war divides the world into two different sides with the capability to destroy faster than we can create, it makes us question, is war really worth it? With the aftermath of World War One, people we’re still divided, but for a different reason, after a war with a catastrophic amount of deaths we had militarists advocating to fight and pacifists demanding peace. The two sources I have used from this essay comes from a European militarist, Friedrich Von Bernhardi with his book “War a Biological Necessity” and United States pacifists, William James, in his book “Moral Equivalent of War”. Therefore this essay will review the

Bernhardi advocates for war, with his ideas being so transparent it is even displayed in his source, “War a Biological Necessity”. Without war he states that the world would have unhealthy development and that Darwin’s Theory of evolution backs up his ideas. With Darwin’s Theory of survival of the fittest, he compares countries to this idea by saying only the most equipped will be able to survive. This creates competition and when competition is introduced we end up with the best of the best ultimately saying that war creates the strongest people. With William James’, the idea of eliminating war cannot be completely done away but shouldn’t be sought after. One example he uses is the United States and the civil relationship with Great Britain. Over centuries of trading we've continue to trade with them without major conflict. William James also states that getting rid of war would only be a fantasy of a utopian society. In this situation I would also have to side with William James’ idea of trying to remain as peaceful as possible for the sake of the citizens of any country. But even with this we have to cover eachs author solution to